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Minority Report: Spielberg and the freedom of choice
The first time I saw Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report I was in my teens and part of an English class taught by Mr. King. Mr. King was arguably my first mentor, a teacher who taught for pleasure and who drew satisfaction from seeing his students evolve as people, not just students. He would often push […]
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Why you should revisit Lost in Translation
More and more often I find myself coming back to Lost in Translation. When asked by friends or relatives, what I consider to be my favorite film, I feel as if I am impulsively compelled to mention Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning film of 2003. Yet, whenever I have to explain why that is, I am at […]
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Eat Drink Man Woman: Ang Lee’s hidden gem
Few filmmakers have shown the range Ang Lee has over the span of the last thirty years. Think about it, the same man who is responsible for Hulk gave us Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among many others. In fact, the Taiwanese director rose […]
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Birdman: How Iñárritu adapted Raymond Carver’s prose
Upon its release in 2014, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman (Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) was met simultaneously with critical acclaim and popular confusion. Audiences seemed to feel belittled and made fun of by a movie that focused on what one of the characters refers to as the “cultural genocide” of filmmaking – caped superheroes […]
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The forgotten brilliance of Harvey Keitel
You’d be hard pressed to find a more expressive face than Harvey Keitel’s. The kind of face the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy had and to which they owed a huge chunk of their success. The kind of face that – had Keitel been born thirty years earlier – would have made him […]
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Duck, You Sucker! Sergio Leone’s belief in friendship
Few directors are as consistent and determined in sticking to the theme of friendship throughout their filmography as Sergio Leone was. The Italian filmmaker behind such classics like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America was always – no matter what – a great believer in the power […]
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The real-life tragedy of John Huston’s Misfits
Few movies can reflect and predict – without knowing, of course – the real-life tragedy of the people involved in their making as accurately as John Huston’s off-beat and fatalistic film from 1961, The Misfits, starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach. Huston’s film is drenched in the tragic fate […]
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Letters from Iwo Jima: How Clint Eastwood deconstructs the enemy
When American Sniper was released in 2014 and went on to become one of the highest grossing movies of all time, many people were quick to dismiss Clint Eastwood’s movie as a needless glorification of American imperialism and gun culture, associating the American icon with jingoistic ideology – when in fact, the film was a […]
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The dog-eat-dog mentality of David Mamet
Long before becoming a deranged FOX News personality, David Mamet was arguably one of the most unique voices of the American stage. His plays defined a certain kind of dog-eat-dog mentality that permeated the rising capitalism of the late 1970s and early 80s, with hits like American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow as well as […]
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The troubled spirituality of Krzysztof Kieślowski
If there is one filmmaker that speaks to me on a spiritual level – who is able to connect with my thoughts, frustrations, passions and speak to my deepest fears and regrets – it is Krzysztof Kieślowski, who with his premature death in 1996 left an insurmountable void in the cinematic landscape. Kieślowski’s movies were […]
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